\\ Blog Tour \\ Review | The Light Tamer by Devyn Dawson

Synopsis: Jessie's moved from New York to North Carolina one week after school lets out for summer break. Being a teen in a retirement area, is one more thing to add to her 'this sucks' list. It's bad enough to have to move, but even worse her alcoholic father left them as he went on a quest to be an artist in Greece.
Things begin to look up when she is reintroduced to Caleb, the dorky boy that saved her life one summer at the beach. Caleb is no longer scrawny and nerdy, he is now tall, dark and handsome. Caleb is a Light Tamer. Now, Jessie and Caleb must learn how to control the light...before they lose each other forever.
Jessie and Amber become fast friends. Amber is a no frills girl, her snarky comments and sassy attitude will raise a few eyebrows and have you laughing out loud. Amber is rough around the edges, a light tamer with only two years left to find the one she is bound to. Her father's surfing accident left her dad paralyzed and her brother dead.
This paranormal romance will keep you on the edge of your seat with humor, romance, and determination. Fall head over heels for Caleb and Jessie

Thoughts: When I agreed to read The Light Tamer for review, I was taking yet another chance at a new indie author. The reviews were great on Goodreads, but I found that I didn't like The Light Tamer and whilst I was able to finish it, I was left pretty disappointed.

There were a few problems I had with the book. First of all, I had a hard time liking Jessie, the protagonist. She is a teenager, but her thoughts, dialogue and actions were pretty immature and quite unrealistic. I didn't care for her because there was no real way for me to connect with her. I also did not find Caleb swoon-worthy, although he was pretty sweet at times. Their interactions were okay, but sort of predictable and not very interesting, even though he could read her mind. I found the secondary characters a bit...annoying. Jessie's grandma acted like a teenager, their friend Amber is a little punk with an attitude, but sort of mehh, and everyone else isn't really too important.

What drew me to this book was the concept. The idea of light tamers and their abilities is pretty neat, but the way the it was executed and explained in the book was rushed and sort of fell flat. Jessie's reactions to everything was unrealistic, and when the Shadows (the villains) were introduced in the plot, I knew where the story was going and wanted to quickly finish the book. The conclusion bothered me quite a bit, because it felt rushed but was also solved ridiculously simple. There was plenty of build up for what was going to happen and then, not much exciting or surprising did actually happen.

There were several flaws in the grammar and spelling, as well as in the e-version of the book itself. The font was really mixed upand looked like this half the time, but thenwould change back in the middle of sentencesor paragraphs. It annoyed me, but I would have been able to look past it if I had enjoyed the book more.

Overall: I think The Light Tamer has a lot of potential and can definitely be fixed up. I did read an e-ARC of the book so the author might have edited the book some, but I have to sadly say though that at this time and the way it is, I did not like it. Perhaps others might enjoy it more and I do recommend you giving it a shot if it sounds like something you might enjoy, but it was not for me.

9 comments

From the synopsis and your review, this doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it doesn't really sound like anything all that different either. Also, I hate it when it's hard to connect with the protagonist. For me, it's almost impossible for me to truly enjoy a book if the main character and I don't click in some way!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Cindy. I don't think this one is a book for me, but I enjoyed reading your review!

Awww no, sucks that it didn't work for you! To be honest, I doubt I'd like it either. Seriously, the summary itself with the whole 'dorky boy turned hotness incarnate' is starting to annoy me sooo much! But I guess what you said about the characters is what put me off because usually, they're what makes the book for me. As long as I can relate to them and understand why they do certain things, I usually tend to like the story even if the plot is fairly mediocre. But ahhhh, I really don't think I'd like these characters! However, like you said, it sounds like it could've had a lot of potential to be great :/

Anyway, thanks so much for the honest review... and sorry for my very long comment haha! :)

It's a shame you didn't like this one! The synopsis sounds pretty good but I can understand why you didn't enjoy it - I really don't like unrealistic characters either, and I like to connect with protagonists, which is harder when they're difficult to like. Thanks for the review :).

Hi Cindy - I appreciate the honest review...as I try to learn from them. I just wanted to say I'm sorry the formatting didn't work correctly - I'm thinking that you had a PDF and possibly a Nook. I have a Nook and I know when I've read a PDF on it, the formatting has looked odd like that. I'm not sure what e-reader you have so I'm just guessing. On the Nook I know it asks you if you want to open it in one of two methods...one doesn't make it that way and the other does. If you didn't have a PDF file, let me know and I'll look into it. Thank you for reviewing the book, I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy it. Please don't let my work sway you away from Indie books, there are many great authors out there. Happy reading and have a beautiful summer. Devyn

Too bad. That's the problem with indie. The writing and concepts are usually good but missing the polish that we're used to when you have an editor. I always wonder why some books are able to get published and others not. I think a lot of self-pub works would be just as good or better than many pub'd books with a little sprucing up.I did notice that the author left a nice comment. It's always nice to see gracious handling of criticism, since a lot of authors would get defensive.